Murder in Tarsis

Forgotten Realms
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The Mysteries: Murder in Tarsis

By John Maddox Roberts

A thin mantle of snow lay upon the city, reflecting the gleam of the full moon, silver-gilding its towers, its mansions and great public buildings. Some windows glowed with the soft yellow light of shaded lamps. In others shone the brighter pinpricks of candles, and a few flickered orange with the radiance of hearth fires. Above many rooftops, thin columns of white smoke ascended from chimney pots into the still air of night.

The man who contemplated this tranquil scene found it quite lovely, albeit charged with an inescapable melancholy, for great segments of the city were dark and ruinous. From these sections came no cheering glow, and no fragrant smoke arose therefrom. This sadness he found in no wise displeasing, for he fancied himself a poet, and poets are ever drawn to melancholy.

He stood in a window beneath the eaves of the Inn of Happy Return, named in the days when the city was a great port and happy returns were not uncommon, when its argosies sailed the great seas of the world. Indeed, any sort of return was happy, when one considered the alternative. The inn stood on a rise of ground in the southwest corner of the city, near the rectangular fort that once guarded its harbor. From this, the third floor of the inn, he could overlook the entire city, for he was above the level of all but its highest towers.

Tarsis the Proud she was known in those days, he mused, and Tarsis the Beautiful, even Tarsis of Ten Thousand Ships, although this was surely an exaggeration. What is she now? he thought. Tarsis the Dying, perhaps. In the great Cataclysm the sea had fled Tarsis, leaving her like a bride spurned by her lover upon the steps of the temple. The land trade kept her a viable city, but she could no longer support the population of old nor enjoy the prosperity that had once made her, if not queen city of the world, at least first among princesses.

He found himself moved to compose a poem upon this famous tragedy, but he had scarcely time to expand his opening verse into a couplet when there came a knocking at his door. “Enter,” he murmured, not turning.

The knocker who came in was a squat man wearing an apron and a cloth cap whose long, tasseled tail dangled beside his round, whiskery face. “You have a visitor,” the innkeeper announced.

The man who strode in behind him was too lofty a personage to knock at lowly doors. He was dressed all in black velvet embroidered with silver thread. His gloves and boots were of soft black leather, and he wore the half-mask affected by men and women of fashion. At his waist was belted a slender sword and its matching dagger.

“Build up that fire, innkeeper,” said the aristocrat, not deigning even to nod toward the little blaze in the corner hearth, “and close those shutters.”

“I prefer to breathe the bracing air of winter night,” said the poet in the mildest of voices, stopping the innkeeper in mid-bustle. “But do by all means revive the fire.”

While the innkeeper poked at the fire and placed kindling on it the two men said nothing. A girl in a tight-laced bodice above a stained skirt brought in a platter bearing a pitcher, two goblets, and an assortment of

seedcakes, dried fruits, and hard-baked biscuits. She filled the goblets and withdrew wordlessly.

Satisfied that the fire now burned properly, the innkeeper stood. “Will there be anything else, my masters?” He smiled hopefully, but there was no reply and he bowed himself out of the room, shutting the door behind him.

The man in velvet took a goblet in a gloved hand and drank. “You are Nistur,” he said, not making a question of it.

“I am he,” said the poet, taking the other goblet.

“You come highly recommended.”

“I have always given my clients satisfaction.”

“My own name is of no concern to you,” said the man in velvet, haughtily.

“And for this reason I have not asked it of you.”

The aristocrat was somewhat nonplussed, for he was accustomed to a certain modicum of groveling from his inferiors, even from those with a fearsome reputation, such as this man possessed. Indeed, the fellow was not at all what he expected, and he studied the figure before him with some care as he pondered his next words.

The man named Nistur was short and rather stout. His jerkin of soft brown leather strained its laces over his paunch, its nap worn and shiny in spots. His yellow boots, once fine but now much scuffed and stained, came to midthigh, their tops turned down. Between jerkin and boots he wore baggy trunk hose, black slashed with orange. His shirt of white linen with its leg-of-mutton sleeves was frayed at collar and cuffs.

Yet withal there was about the man an air of neatness and precision. His broad, long-fingered hands were immaculately manicured. The ends of his mustache were curled with care and his beard trimmed to a symmetrical point. The abundant, curly black hair stopped an inch

above his ears, leaving a dome of bare, gleaming scalp to reflect the firelight. Beneath sardonically arched brows, his eyes were black, sharp and steady.

“I was composing a poem upon the semitragic fall of your city when you arrived,” Nistur said.

“Greater poets than you have made it their life’s work,” the other said, sneering at this presumption. “And how is it that you think this subject merely semitragical?” Even as he said it he was nettled at himself for admitting interest in the thoughts of such a man.

“In the great tragedies, cities perish at the height of their glory, as did Istar. For a great city to continue so diminished is ignoble and not fit subject matter for a true epic.”

“I did not come here to speak of poetry,” said the aristocrat. “I desire the death of a man. Is this not your craft?”

“It is, indeed,” said Nistur. “Truly, I am a poet, but these times are unkind to one who seeks to exercise the divine gift, so I must have a means to earn my bread. I choose the ancient and most honorable vocation of the assassin.”

“Gild your profession as you will,” said the man in velvet, smoothing a long, graying mustache with a gloved finger on which gleamed a golden ring wrought in the semblance of a dragon that gripped in its talons a huge, blue pearl. “The man who must die calls himself Ironwood. He is a mercenary, at present residing in an inn on the old waterfront, such as is favored by his kind. Why he must die is—”

“Is no concern of mine. Yes, I know. If you do not feel constrained to explain your reasons for hiring a killing, please do not feel compelled to remind me of the fact repeatedly. You are not my first client.”

Stung by this insolence, the aristocrat was about to put the assassin in his place when they were interrupted by

sounds from the street below. An exchange of angry shouts, rendered confused and incoherent by echoing from the many-angled walls bordering the narrow street, was followed by the sound of steel clashing on steel. The ring of metal bore a flat, tinny undertone that the experienced ears of the two men above recognized as the sound made by weapons of indifferent temper.

The two went to the window and gazed with interest on the scene below, each for his own reasons. The aristocrat raised his half-mask to see the better, but he kept his face half averted, a velvet-gloved hand between himself and Nistur’s gaze. The assassin did not even try to look. As far as he was concerned, the less he knew about his employers, the better.

In the street below a dozen men were engaged in combat, wielding curved, two-handed swords with more enthusiasm than art. Even as the two watched, a man fell, then another, amid curses, shouts, and screams. Blood, rendered black by the light of Solinari, began to pool in the snow.

The fight continued for perhaps a hundred heartbeats; then the survivors of one faction had had enough, broke away and ran, closely pursued by the sound men of the other side, who bayed like hounds on the scent of prey. Two men lay still on the street amid spreading black puddles, while another limped away, using his long sword as a crutch, his hand clasped against a badly gashed thigh.

The aristocrat and the assassin turned from the window. “Brawling bands of ruffians,” said the former. “The city is. full of them of late. They all use those two-handed slashers. In my day, men dueled with the rapier.” He touched the slender blade at his side.

“Yours was a more elegant time,” said Nistur. “The sole advantage of their choice of weapon is that it allows one to perform maximum damage with minimal skill,

making it ideal for street brawlers like those we just observed. My own weapons are rather antiquated.” He nodded toward a corner of the little room where a sheathed sword stood propped with its belt wrapped spirally around it. It was not a rapier like the aristocrat’s, nor a curved two-hander like those of the street bravos, nor yet was it the long, straight, broad battlefield weapon favored by soldiers, nor the cutlass of the sailor. Instead, it was a basket-hilted sword of middling length, perhaps three fingers longer than two feet. Next to it rested a small, spike-bossed buckler of beaten steel, no more than a foot in diameter.

“The basket-hilt is out of fashion, to be sure,” said the aristocrat. “But at least it is a gentleman’s weapon. Broadsword or backsword?” he asked with a certain interest. The nobles of Tarsis liked to think of themselves as a warrior aristocracy, although in reality they had relinquished that role to professionals many generations before. Still, practice at arms was esteemed a gentlemanly accomplishment.

“Backsword,” said Nistur, meaning that it was a single-edged blade, rather than the double-edged broadsword. “It was forged two hundred years ago by dwarves of the Anvil-Breaker clan.”

“They made storied weapons,” the aristocrat acknowledged. “I have some specimens in my own family armory. Very well, to business. You seem to know your craft and now you know the name of your vie—your subject. Will you require anything else?”

“I hesitate to bother one as noble as yourself with trifles,” said Nistur, “but there remains the matter of my recompense.”

“Oh. Yes.” The velvet-wearer reached into a scrip at his belt and drew forth a leather purse that he tossed on the table with a grimace of distaste. “Here is half, as agreed. Upon successful completion of your mission, leave word

with the innkeeper and you shall have the remainder.” There could be no haggling. The fee for this service was set by ancient custom.

“There will be one more thing,” the aristocrat continued, “a trifling matter, but one I would see done.”

“What might that be?” queried Nistur.

“The man wears a rather unusual armor. After your commission is accomplished, be so good as to remove it and hand it over when you collect the balance of your pay.”

The short man bristled with indignation. “Sir, you insult me! I am an assassin of high repute. I do not rob the dead! I realize it is customary for heroes and even kings to strip the armor from a slain foe of high rank, but that may be done only on the battlefield. It would be a degradation for a man of my profession! Surely, you have flunkies who can perform this deed for you, after I have carried out my commission.”

The velvet-clad man seemed about to give way to a burst of temper, but he restrained himself. “Very well, if you have so high an opinion of yourself. Just accomplish the killing and collect your pay.”

“Just so that is understood,” said Nistur, somewhat mollified. “You will know when my mission is accomplished because there are those who report to you all that occurs in this city. When you are so informed, send the balance to me here.”

“As you wish,” said the aristocrat. He adjusted the half-mask over his visage. “I do not expect to encounter you again. Best that you should leave the city as soon as you have collected your blood money, assassin.”

“I cannot think what would detain me here, lacking the pleasure of your company, my lord,” said the other.

The man in velvet whirled, snatched the door open, and disappeared amid a swirl of cloak-skirts and winking silver thread.

The door closed, and Nistur sighed. He had known long ago, when he had taken up his doleful profession, that he would be in the service of such men. He knew as well that the man who hired him would try to have him killed once the job was done, probably by the person sent to deliver the balance of the payment. Men of that class spoke much of their honor, but they bothered to behave honorably only toward their equals and superiors, and then only when they saw it to be to their own advantage. Nistur had been forced to chastise many such clients in the past.

He refilled his goblet and returned to the window. As he sipped he sought to remember the poem he had begun earlier, but found that it had fled from his mind. He shrugged. No matter. The city of Tarsis now seemed to him unworthy of a fine poem. Let it die and be forgotten

Already the night watch had dragged away the bodies from the street below. There were dark pools on the snowy street, long streaks where the bodies had been dragged off, and an arc of blood spread across a whitewashed wall, long, thin trickles depending from its rainbow curve. The silver moon illumined the scene with great clarity, but it leached all color from it. Nistur found that he was moved to create another poem, this one in the terse, elegant style of the Istarian verse-epigram.

Blood upon the snow

Fair the face of the silver moon shines

Upon the blood of the unworthy

Will it be the moon of night or the sun of day

That shines from my life’s blood?

Mightily pleased with this exercise of his gift, Nistur prepared himself to go out and undertake the task for which he had been retained.

From long habit he reached within his jerkin and assured himself that the short double-edged dagger was in its accustomed place, hanging from a thong around his neck. Next his hand dipped into the turned-down top of his right boot and felt the flat bone handle of his long dirk. All was in order. He belted on the basket-hilted sword and hung the little shield from the hook on his sword sheath. From a peg by the door he took his wide, low-crowned hat, decorated with long feathers. Thin blades were sewn into the edges of its brim. He threw a fur-trimmed cloak over his shoulders and, last of all, drew on a pair of gloves made of fine kidskin, embroidered with colorful thread.